Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (7 page)

He turned the corner, and with one last quick look over his shoulder, walked as swiftly as he dared away from the noise.

CHAPTER V

Now that the wail of the siren was dulled, other sounds took its place. Screams. Growls. Glass shattering. Distant gunshots. The sounds of a city tearing itself apart. Mason stopped for a moment and surveilled his new environment. Three males were hunched over two different corpses near the far end of the block. Two others were standing thirty yards away, heads tilted and ears tuned to the street. A male and female raced from one side of the street to the other and disappeared into an underground garage, followed almost immediately by a man's desperate howl. Two others were ambling slowly down the middle of the road directly toward Mason; an old man and a young girl, walking side by side and straight down the centerline. They looked like they might be a man and his granddaughter, and appeared so unremarkable that Mason thought that they might actually be refugees like he. He even went so far as to give them a little wave of recognition, but then they drew close enough for him to see their faces. They had wild, sightless eyes, and their chins were painted red with fresh blood. He stepped quietly to the side, held his breath, and let them pass by a dozen feet away.

Halfway down the block, a door suddenly opened and a man stepped onto the sidewalk. He was nattily dressed in a gray suit, but his tie was askew, and a scrap of toilet paper was pinned to his chin by a drop of dried blood. Apparently, this poor hapless buffoon had gotten through his entire morning routine heedless of the strange new sounds coming from down below. He'd nicked himself shaving in the dark, but somehow managed to get himself all the way down to the lobby without further incident. Now he blithely strolled off to work with his briefcase in one hand and all of his attention focused on his dead cell phone in the other.

Look up!
Look up, you fool!

Mason opened his mouth to shout a warning at the man, but it was already too late. Before the fool had taken a handful of steps, the old man and the girl were flying toward him. The man turned at the very last moment and saw them coming, then a bewildered look came across his face, and he simply stood there gaping like an idiot. It looked to Mason like he didn't even have time to register what was happening before there were on him. The cell phone went one way, the briefcase went the other, and the man fell backward with a confused yelp. His arms flailed about as the young girl tore at his throat, and he attempted a weak punch as the old man ripped his shirt open, but that was the extent of the struggle. By the time the old man had his face buried in the man's abdomen, all signs of life ceased.

An inadvertent cry of disgust issued from Mason's throat, and he immediately recognized his blunder. The two males who had been standing close by, listening, picked up on the sound and turned his way. Then one of them took a single step toward him and growled. Mason held his breath and stood perfectly still, and thirty seconds passed before the madmen lost interest and went back to their silent vigil.

Absurdly, with all that was going on around him, Mason couldn't help but wonder why these two hadn't also been attracted to the man with the briefcase. Sure, they had been farther away than the old man and the girl, but they had to have heard. So, why hadn't they attacked as a pack? For that matter, why were these feral beasts not attracted to the sounds made by others of their kind? Clearly, there was something in their programming that allowed them to differentiate between a human and one of their own, but was there also some underlying agreement among them? Could it possibly be as simple as 'this one's mine, that one's yours'? It didn't make sense, but what part of this insanity did?

Just then, the sharp
crack!
of a gunshot echoed through the street. Every one of the wild things lifted their heads and heeded the noise, but none of them moved. Again, Mason was perplexed. Shouldn't they all be racing off helter-skelter? But then he understood, and here was something that he could finally wrap his head around. The buildings formed an echo chamber of sorts, so by the time the gunshot reached this place, it had bounced off of so many walls that Mason, himself, couldn't tell its location. So, the creatures' hearing was still human after all. That bit of understanding may have seemed incidental, even trivial, but it was actually a great relief.

Okay, good enough, but now what? Where should he go? Where in all of this horror would be safe? He couldn't keep wandering the streets, that was for sure. His best bet was to find some place to lie low and wait for help. Surely, the police would get a handle on this eventually. Maybe the military would even show up in their armored Humvees and hazmat suits to restore order. But even as he considered those possibilities, he knew that it was all wishful thinking. No one was coming to help. The police had a whole city to contain, and the army would have bigger things going on than to worry about Mason's sorry ass. He may as well make a wish for his fairy godmother to appear and whisk him off to her magic castle. He was in this alone. Just like the man with the briefcase or the woman in the high heels or the poor guy in the stairwell, in a city of over a million souls, everyone was in this alone.

Every man for himself …..
Mason thought again, grimly.

He had to get away from the madness. Out of the city and into the suburbs. Burlingame, maybe, or Hillsborough. Maybe even as far away as San Mateo. His car was in the underground garage of his apartment building, but there was no going back there; his trick with the car alarm had seen to that. Other vehicles lay all around, but he had no idea how to break into a car, much less how to hot-wire one. It looked easy enough in the movies, but it would take him time to figure it out, and he doubted he could do either in utter silence. For now, at least, he would have to go it on foot, but he would keep an eye out for a vehicle that might have been left with keys in the ignition.

He figured he would head generally south, assess each street as he came to it, and decide the actual route as he went. Once he got away from the skyscrapers, the going would have to get easier. And when he got far enough south, then there would a Red Cross nurse with a cup of coffee and a donut, and he'd tell her his horror stories, and she'd tell him how brave he was, and life would eventually get back to normal.

He got his bearings, did an about face, and struck a barely acceptable bargain between speed and stealth as he set off south.

He passed through the intersection without incident, then he stopped and surveyed the way ahead. He could see eight creatures in the next block; some feeding and others standing vigil; waiting, listening. He considered bypassing the street, but the next block wasn't likely to be any better. In fact, these numbers might very well be as good as it got until he got out of the skyscrapers.

Christ….
he sighed gloomily,
This is gonna be a seriously looong day……

He wondered if there might be some better way to travel. Of course a car would be optimum, but  that eventuality aside, there had to be something less dangerous than slogging through the city on foot. He thought briefly about the rooftops, but without webshooters or Batman's grapple gun, the entire notion was ridiculous. But wait…..if he couldn't travel
above
the street, maybe he could travel
below
it. Now here was a real possibility. There were subways all the way from the financial district, down to Daly City, and south to the airport. Surely
that
would be far enough to find his Red Cross girl with the donut. 

Sadly, he could already see one major problem with the idea. The subways would have their own share of crazies—
Hell, they
always
had their share of crazies!
he Mason acknowledged with a wry smirk,  but those crazies were in a hole in the ground. With no quick escape routes out and little room to maneuver, those tunnels would quickly become a grave.

But the BART system wasn't the only subterranean highway in a metropolitan city. What about the sewers? They literally crisscrossed all of San Francisco. Sure, it would mean wading through filth, and the air was bound to be rank, but it was sure to be a damn-sight better than inching his way through city streets. And what were the chances of coming across a homicidal nutcase in a sewer?

The more Mason considered the idea, the more sense it made. There was a manhole cover a dozen steps away from where he was, so he padded lightly over to it and crouched low. There were little gaps along the edge meant for a specialized tool, but he figured he could pry up the lid if he could find a crowbar or metal rod. With this in mind, he scanned the area and let his mind work. A hardware store was what he needed, but this neighborhood was all residential. The few storefronts in this area were all coffee shops and bodegas and newsstands and flower shops. But there were vehicles everywhere, so how about a tire iron? Every car would have a spare tire and jack cozied up in the trunk, and right beside those would be a tire iron. But such a notion made him return to his earlier dilemma; how does one break into a car without making a breath of sound?

Just then, he became aware of a shuffling from behind. A young man in bloodied coveralls was crossing the street toward him, not at a run, but rather stumbling along haltingly as if he wasn't quite certain of what he'd heard. His long hair fell in swirls about his wild, dead eyes, and his face was a mask of dried blood. Evidently, this creature had charged blindly into a wall or tumbled over a curb, for his nose had been twisted into question mark and most of his front teeth had been shattered. But with his lips curled up into a perpetual snarl, those broken splinters of teeth only served to give the creature the aspect of a hungry shark.

Mason stepped slowly and gingerly backward and angled himself between two cars parked against the curb. The sharkman approached to the precise spot where Mason had been, bumped into the far side of the very car against which Mason huddled, and came to an abrupt halt. Then he just stood there, head atilt and staring blindly forward. Mason held himself absolutely still and silent four feet away, and sure enough, some other sound from further down the block soon caught the creature's attention. There was a flurry of hair as the sharkman's head whipped to the side, then he launched himself away from Mason, and ran headlong toward this new prey.

Mason breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back into the road. He took a quick survey of the swarm and realized that the idea of breaking into a trunk to find a tire iron was impossible. At least for now. There was no way he could do it silently, and the monsters would be on him in seconds. Still, the idea of a surreptitious withdrawal into the sewer system was a good one, but he would have to wait for a more favorable opportunity.

For now, he resigned himself to his current predicament. Somehow, he had to get from one end of the street to the other without making a sound, and the sharkman had just shown him that it was all but impossible to be completely silent. He considered removing his shoes and padding through the gauntlet in stocking feet, but decided against it. Firstly, he was already wearing sneakers, so the difference wouldn't be much. And besides, if he suddenly had to run, he knew he could do it faster with shoes on, and the thought of encountering broken shards of glass in stockinged feet didn't exactly fill him with delight. He thought of setting off another car alarm to distract the creatures so he could slip past, but he had no wish to revisit that particular hell.

Then he had an idea. It was preposterous, but it might just give him a tiny edge. With agonizing slowness, he slipped his keyring out of his pocket, and with one eye always on the creatures around him, spent a full minute slowly working the keys off of the ring. Now he had eight keys and a ring in a tight fist, and only the vaguest suggestion of a plan in his mind as he padded slowly and softly into the fray.

Mason's eyes were everywhere at once. He watched the creatures he could see and looked for others who might appear from doorways or from around hidden corners, but mostly he scoured the ground in front of him. Before he committed to taking a step, he'd comb the roadway for any bit of detritus that might give him away, then if the pavement was clear of debris, he'd bring his foot forward and touch his toe to the ground. If there was no discernible crunch of grit or, God forbid, a tiny undetected stone, he'd gently lower his heel. If there was still no sound and no movement from the crazies, he'd bring up his other foot and repeat the process. Over and over he performed this grueling ritual, each time watching closely for any indication that he'd been heard despite his best efforts.

At last he'd made it to the middle of this particular gauntlet, and the crazies were all around him. The closest was an old female twenty feet away. He saw her stir as he came closer, and he froze long enough for the creature to lapse back into a stupor, but he could see that even apparently insensate, she was still fully alert and had her ears pricked to the slightest sound.  Ever so gently then, he eased his back foot up and forward, and lowered it gently to the ground. Another two feet closer to the intersection. Two hundred more such steps, and he'd be out of the gauntlet. And then there would be another. And another. And another.

Christ!
At this rate, it would take
weeks
to get out of the city, and every single second of every minute of every hour of every one of those weeks, he would be perched on the raggedy edge of disaster. One misstep, one unseen pebble between sneaker and pavement, and he'd be done. It was impossible, and yet there was no other choice. And so he continued on, putting one foot in front of the other; one step at a time, one foot at a time, one potential catastrophe at a time.